What constitutes a good theory?
2023-09-21
„experimental tests are often superfluous and we should instead focus more on nonempirical evaluations of the quality of our theories” (Szollosi & Donkin, 2021)
A good theory …
Wenn der Hahn kräht auf dem Mist, ändert sich’s Wetter oder bleibt wie es ist.
Slide from Karolin Salmen’s talk @ ZPID
Very difficult topic … - Quine-Duhem problem: A failed test always can either be attributed to (a) a core hypothesis (which would falsify / weaken the theory) or (b) an auxiliary hypothesis (“The manipulation did not work; the measurement was unreliable”) - Lakatosian defense (blaming the auxiliary, creating new ad-hoc auxiliary hypotheses)
(see Von Nordenflycht, A. (2023). Clean up Your Theory! Invest in Theoretical Clarity and Consistency for Higher-Impact Research. Organization Science, orsc.2022.16122. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16122)
Formal modeling in psychology - Empirisches Praktikum, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München